Woodland Park Prison Zoo has announced it will send its lone African elephant, Watoto, to be exhibited in another zoo. Which could be even worse than here.

Watoto is 44 years old, and has spent every miserable one of them at Woodland Park since since she was taken from her mother as a baby in Kenya. IT IS NOT RIGHT that she die in a zoo. After 44 years of making money for WPZ, they OWE her. Every person who ever went to the zoo (myself included, once 15 years ago) owes her. Way more than can ever be repaid, for the theft of 44 years of family, friends and freedom. She has a host of painful health issues, as well as the emotional ones caused by prolonged solitary confinement. The absolute LEAST the Zoo should do is let her go. And the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) in California is willing to take her. There, she could roam on 80 acres of rolling hills, with a therapy pool, lake, and six other elephants.

Sign a petition to Seattle’s mayor asking that Watoto be retired to a sanctuary:

Also, save the date: Oct. 4th from noon to 2pm. Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants is one of the sponsors of the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos. Details coming.

Come on. Whatever time remains to her with warmth, freedom and companionship…and all you have to do is take a minute or two? Don’t even think of saying “Later”.

Update, August 22: If you are only reading about this now, it is too late for Watoto, who died today. “Too Late” is a pretty terrible thing. It means she never. ever. knew a grassy meadow, or bathed in a lake, or made decisions about where she wanted to go and with whom. Not the world. Just simple things that should be natural for everyone. But she never had them, and now she never will. Let’s make sure we never have to say that about Chai and Bamboo. You were going to write for Watoto; write for Chai and Bamboo:

This is another urgent one: Public comments are being heard until August 19th on the US Army Corps of Engineers’ draft Environmental Impact Statement on whether to authorize the gunning down of 16,000 double-crested cormorants nesting on East Sand Island in Oregon. Cormorants are big: 3ft long, with a 4ft wingspan. DDT almost wiped them out but they recovered well, only to be decimated by slaughters of this kind, that tear families apart, leaving parents without their children as well as orphaned young to die of starvation. In addition, you KNOW many would only be injured and succumb later after much suffering.

Are you wondering why? Oh, come on, one guess will do it. Right: they eat fish! The massacre is “necessary to reduce the predation on juvenile salmon and steelhead trout”.

The amount of fish eaten by cormorants isn’t even visible on the graph of Who Eats The Most Fish. Humans are the biggest fish-consumers and the worst sharers in the history of this planet. If you were REALLY concerned about predation on fish, how about going to the real predators? An incredibly easy, cheap, compassionate fix to this problem that threatens sixteen thousand cormorants is DITCH THE FISH. Instead of this massacre, you could make a healthy choice to eat vegan meals instead and those 16,000 beings get to live. Everyone wins.

So please ask Corps officials to “reject Alternatives C and D” (which allow the massacre), and urge them to focus instead on the biggest threats to salmon—dams, human development, and the fisheries industry. And then forward this alert widely!

Please also participate in the Corps’ webinar/conference on Thursday, August 14, at 6:30 p.m. PDT. To take part, call toll-free 1-888-431-3632 and when prompted, enter the access code: 3963766. Once you’re on the call, log on to the webinar at https://www.webmeeting.att.com. Don’t want to do it? I know…but remember the Other Side Never Sleeps.

Please feel free to use PETA’s sample letter, or consult it for talking points, but remember that using your own words is always more effective.

You know those things that are so horrendous you just know THIS TIME, absolutely EVERYONE must be against them? Except invariably someone comes along with a nasty comment that shows there actually isn’t anything bad enough for EVERYONE to condemn it? I am talking about things like chopping up dolphins and slaughtering dogs slowly for tender meat, and poaching elephants for ivory trinkets.

Right….ivory trinkets.

So the day before yesterday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed the first state ivory (and rhino horn) ban. That is pretty great. It is even greater that the Obama administration has proposed a federal ivory ban. It winded me for a second or two to find that there are NRA-backed, Republican-introduced bills in both the House and the Senate to kill it. These bills would also block states from passing their own bans (which would effectively repeal parts of the recent New Jersey law). And the NRA is vociferous about supporting them.

We need to mobilize and make sure our lawmakers know an overwhelming number of AMERICANS SUPPORT BANNING IVORY.

And we need to do it quickly. As you know, nasty pieces of legislation can be tacked on to larger bills and rushed through at any moment. So PLEASE, call NOW. Don’t put it off until later. Not only is a call quickest, it carries the most weight. Calling is EASY and NO-stress; there is no conversation: you give your name and say you want your lawmakers “to oppose any and all pieces of legislation that kill the federal ban and block state ivory bans.” That’s it.

It’s a good idea to know your legislators’ contact info, but if you don’t, look it up quickly and easily: http://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup

aaaaaand now I have you here reading stuff, with your pen or your phone or at least your keyboard at the ready, I have another request:

In the meantime you will have heard that Proposition 1 passed in Seattle, certainly because most people didn’t realise what the hell they were voting for. “Parks? Great! Yes on that!” But now Woodland Park Prison Zoo stands to receive $2 million additional dollars each year — up to $34 million — and maybe even more than that.WPPZ has two lobbyists. Professional shouters and money-obtainers. We are not professional shouters and money-obtainers, but we do CARE. Please write to the Mayor and City Council. We were told they count the number of emails they receive for each issue. If you only write one line, it still COUNTS. You can send the same one line to everyone, but see those talking points below? (helpfully provided by Friends of Woodland Park Zoo Elephants) They are so good there’s no way you can choose just one line. Go ahead, indulge: write about them all.

The public appears to have entered an era of indifference to the plight of Canada geese trying to coexist with humans. The major newspapers and news stations are utterly uninterested in running any geese stories. Not “newsworthy enough”. This kind of don’t-give-a-shit atmosphere is EXACTLY what communities and law enforcement and the USDA like best of all: prime goose-slaughter conditions.

The lone standouts: City Living Seattle will be running an article by Christie Lagally, it looks as if the Woodinville Weekly will do one, and you may also see letters to the editor by Diane Weinstein. Please, when you do, comment and write your own letters; let editors know this is a subject that still matters a LOT to a LOT of noisy, articulate, persistent people. Allowing, by our apathy, the slaughter of Canada geese for reasons of selfishness and convenience is dangerous, not least because it allows an abusive mindset to grow. We do not need even ONE new USDA killer to be offered a job, one that will then need to be justified by more goose killing.

The petition for the geese on Change.org, asking Puget Sound area officials to stop killing geese has 1,300 signatures and is growing very slowly. 1,300 people against gassing geese families?? Even Ms. Glass-All-Empty here knows THAT isn’t true. Have you signed? Have your friends? Have your family members? You know how the whole situation would change if half a million names were on that petition?! Please, share the link as widely as possible.

The U.S. Senate will soon be voting on the dangerous “Sportsmen’s Act,” a radical handout to extreme trophy hunting groups.

In a single swoop, this legislation would open millions of acres of public lands–including sensitive Wilderness Areas–to hunting and fur trapping, at the expense of other land users and endangered and threatened species.

It would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from even considering the issue of toxic lead ammunition which poisons wildlife and the environment. And it would permit the latest in a series of import allowances for sport-hunted polar bear trophies from Canada, encouraging trophy hunters to escalate the killing of threatened species around the globe.

For the past 13 years, USDA Wildlife Services has been killing Canada Geese in the Puget Sound area, under an agreement with several cities and areas.

The geese are rounded up in parks around Lake Washington and other areas, and gassed to death or shot. In 2013, nearly 1200 were killed in King County alone.

Humane solutions, including egg addling, use of OvoControl-G (a proven oral birth control method for geese), and sterilization, exist.

Alternately, parks can use other measures, such as landscape modification, goose deterrent products and control techniques, automated devices to clean up goose droppings, and education and public outreach on the need to stop feeding waterfowl in our parks.

The members of the 2014 interlocal agreement to kill geese include Bellevue, Kent, Kirkland, Mountlake Terrace, Port of Seattle – Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Renton, Seattle Parks and Recreation, SeaTac, Tacoma Metro Parks, Tukwila, Woodinville, and the University of Washington.

In June, Wildlife Services released a 655-page report in which it acknowledged killing over four million animals last year. This total includes over 75,000 coyotes, 420 black bears, 3,700 foxes, 12,200 prairie dogs, as well as beavers, wolves, mountain lions, otters, , ferrets, birds, and other animals. It’s a secretive, wasteful, ineffective and cruel war on wildlife. One they need to not only continue but grow. One that, fyi, you are largely financing.

Bear in mind that these four million animals are not only shot (and we know how often that is NOT a quick death) from land and from the air, but also trapped, burned and poisoned — methods that cause hours/days of agony before death , and the deaths of countless other non-target (and non-reported) animals. In addition, I think we have probably all seen appalling news stories and videos about Wildlife Services employees routinely practising extreme cruelty, leaving animals to die in traps from exposure or starvation, attacking trapped coyotes for fun, and even brutalizing domestic dogs.

It is also good to remember that while all of these animals were killed because they were somehow inconveniencing humans, a large number died specifically because they were inconveniencing humans producing meat – so many that Wildlife Services has been termed a subsidy for the livestock industry.

Wildlife Services operates with little public oversight and few rules requiring that it use the best available science, non-lethal methods, or techniques to reduce the deaths of nontarget animals — or even the suffering of target animals. There is a growing outcry from the public, scientists, non-governmental organizations and members of Congress, to change this. Let’s add to it.

It seems that the entire world should now be aware of the carnage of dolphins in a bay filled with their own blood in Taiji, Japan. It is less widely known that the Danish Faroe Islands — just 200 miles from Scotland — host their own annual cetacean slaughter.

Much like in Taiji, the hunt starts when fishing boats sight a pod of whales or dolphins, and drive them into a bay. However, in the Faroe Islands, 23 different bays are used, not just one (which makes sabotaging or even just recording the hunts much more difficult). Every member in the pod is driven or pulled onto the beach with ropes and using a blunt hook in their blowhole. Then they are hacked to death. Faroese citizens take part and rush into the water to join in the slaughter, sparing no one, not mothers, babies, or pregnant females.

In allowing this to continue, Denmark is in violation of three conventions it has signed vowing to do everything in its capacity to protect pilot whales — the Bern Convention, Bonn Convention and ASCOBANS. Pilot whales are classified as “strictly protected” under the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. Even harassing whales and dolphins is a crime in Europe.

The Faroe Islanders have one of the highest standards of living in the world, so the slaughter of entire pods of small cetaceans is not to provide jobs for ‘starving subsistence fishermen’, nor to satisfy the unconscionable demand for performers at marine parks, nor even to feed hungry mouths. Faroese health officials have condemned pilot whale meat as unsafe for human consumption (due to mercury, PCBs, dioxins and DDT derivatives); especially as Faroese children already show higher levels of poisonous mercury than anyone else in the world. The annual Faroese ‘hunt’ — called the Grindadrap or Grind — still takes place because it is apparently considered ‘traditional fun’.

Sea Shepherd has been disrupting the Grind since 1983, in spite of considerable violence against them. Video footage they obtained has provided the basis for several documentaries. Sea Shepherd’s Operation Grindstop this year will include calling the Danish government to task for providing EU subsidies and loans to the Faroe Islands which openly flaunt European laws protecting cetaceans, and working to gain direct support from members of the European Parliament. Sea Shepherd is also researching the possibility of creating a defensive wall of sound outside the Grind coves to deter migrating cetaceans. Efforts are being made to identify the Faroese fishing vessels used in Grind hunts, as well as their owners, for the purposes of naming and shaming them as well as having them blacklisted as EU fish suppliers. Sea Shepherd also intends to further publicize the fact that the Faroe Islanders kill hundreds of dolphins as well as pilot whales. For this reason the logo for Operation Grindstop 2014 features both a pilot whale and a dolphin (see below). It is to be hoped that all this will have a detrimental effect on the Faroese tourist industry.

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if one Faroe Islander stood alone on the beach of a Grind cove and held out his arms and shouted, “NO MORE!”

Some of you have probably already heard of Tony. He is a Siberian-Bengal tiger who has spent the last 13 years in a crappy chainlink cage at a truck stop in Grosse Tete, Louisiana. Take just a moment to think of what you have done in the last 13 years. Take another to think of what tigers would normally do in 13 years. He hasn’t done anything.

Incredibly, the Louisiana Senate Bill 250 presently pending was specifically designed to allow Michael Sandlin, owner of the truck stop, to continue his miserable exhibition of Tony — this despite the fact that Tony’s captivity was declared illegal by a state court of appeal, AND despite the fact that Sandlin has repeatedly violated federal law by failing to provide adequate veterinary care and safe and sanitary housing and by handling that causes undue stress/ trauma. The Louisiana legislature should be ashamed of itself — but obviously isn’t — for creating a loophole to skirt its own state’s animal-protection laws.

SO…unless Governor Bobby Jindal vetoes the bill, Tony’s fate is sealed. It is URGENT, therefore, that we all contact the governor as quickly as possible, by phone (225-342-7015 or 866-366-1121), fax (225-342-7099), by letter (P.O. Box 94004, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70804-9004), or by email (http://www.gov.la.gov/index.cfm?md=form&tmp=email_governor), to ask him to VETO SB 250. I have listed these in order of importance, although of course best of all is to do ALL OF THEM.

It is bad enough that Tony has had to languish in appalling conditions on reeking cement for 13 years; it would be heartbreaking to know that for lack of effort, he would never know anything else. For however much time he has left, he should know grass, water, running, climbing trees, and being able to make simple decisions about his own life. Please … do it now: ask Governor Jindal to veto SB250.